


On the Wind to a New Day

by cyndrarae



Category: Dark Angel
Genre: Alec and Max are BFFs, Friendship, Logan being an Ass but not really, M/M, Possibly Unrequited Love, Post Season/Series 02, Top Alec, aftermath of a breakup
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-12
Updated: 2013-06-12
Packaged: 2017-12-14 19:35:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/840580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyndrarae/pseuds/cyndrarae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the revolution, Alec must re-do his life: new apartment, two jobs, a lot of reconstruction, and a young man discovering himself. But there’s one thing Alec wishes he could go back to, one thing that gives his life meaning and purpose. If only he can convince Max and Logan to see it his way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On the Wind to a New Day

**Author's Note:**

> Written for LJ's da_reversebang 2013 prompt #103 by the very talented evian_fork. The artwork can be found here: [**Evian_fork @ livejournal**](http://evian-fork.livejournal.com/132106.html) (There's a bit of a typo in there but please ignore that :) the artwork itself is beautiful!)
> 
> Lyrics in italics belong to the magnificent genius of Pink Floyd, either as a band, or separately as Richard Wright, Roget Walters and/or David Gilmour.

 

**April 19, 2022**

 

 

> _We were cut off from our lives, by a wall of pain,_  
>  _It can't be seen, it's so routine, it has no face or name._  
>  _But now the day has broken, can see in better ways,_  
>  _A path leading to the light, a hope that never fades._  
>  _All power to the brave._

 

“Seattle nights are the darkest,” she says when she hears Alec coming.

“Well,” she shrugs to herself, not having turned to look at him yet. “Technically all nights are, at this time, just before dawn. But something about this city, from up here…”

She doesn’t finish, like she expects him to instinctively just _get_ her; which Alec does, as always.

“Doesn’t help that you’re practically sitting inside a raincloud,” he suggests, folding his legs under himself to sit beside her.

He doesn’t need to remind her that the power supply is still being rationed and is cut off to most districts at night. His earlier comment about the clouds is pretty useless too.

Max, of all people, knows this view better than anyone.

She turns to him, sending her long black hair sashaying in the wind. “DC, on the other hand…”

“Has nothing this tall, so where would you go to hide out there?” he smirks until she rolls her eyes.

“I hate it when you smirk like that.”

She’s been trying to convince him for days, ever since she found out about him and… well, it’s just him now. Alec keeps his hands in his jacket pockets and looks away.

Dust quietly settles on the last battle of Washington. The Familiars have gone underground (for now), their extinction-level threat neutralized. The transgenics are still here, but their numbers have dwindled. Dear friends lost in one last stand to safeguard not just theirs but the lives of millions of ordinaries.

But for a change, not all has been swept under the proverbial governmental carpet, which is why Max no longer lives in her adopted hometown.

Together they sit atop the Space Needle (or what’s left of it), not talking, not touching, not even looking at each other, until the sky starts to meekly glow with dawn’s first light.

Max takes in a deep breath. “Do you remember what I told you the first time you came up here with me?”

_”So… you got any deep thoughts you want to share? Any profound realizations about life?”_

_“Yeah. Love sucks.”_

“I do.”

“But you never listen, do you.”

It’s not a question. Alec shrugs, not looking at her still. “What can I say – stupid, stubborn genetically engineered heart. Wants what it wants.”

“Genetically engineered hearts break too, as you know.”

For once, Alec doesn’t have a smart-aleck response. Max puts an arm around him and they sit quietly for another few minutes.

“Sure about DC? I could use a wingman on Capitol Hill against that merry bunch of politicians and their alphabet party.”

He shakes his head, “You got this, Max. I suck at diplomacy, you know that.”

Max scoffs, “Sure. Because that’s the only reason you want to stay here.”

Alec smiles, but there is sadness in there that only she, his best friend, will understand. She gets up to leave, has an F16 to catch. She starts to gracefully climb down the ladder that swings precariously off its hinges, not that either of them cares.

“By the way, that thing you’re doing on the side?”

Alec raises an eyebrow, “You gonna tell me it’s ridonkulous and a complete waste of time?”

Max shrugs, “Nah,” then drops out of sight, just as the sun rises behind her.

 

***

**April 29, 2022**

 

 

> _I can take or leave it, won't be the woebegone,_  
>  _Don't need a model universe to hang your pictures on._  
>  _They're never going to make it easy_  
>  _Of this you can be sure._  
>  _I greet you from the wilderness,_  
>  _I'll stay inside your door._

 

Her name is Lola. She is a real estate agent. And even if it doesn’t quite work _musically_ speaking, Alec can’t get this classic ditty he’s picked up somewhere out of his head.

Lola is energetic and high-pitched as she shows him around a very spacious studio loft, bouncing about on four-inch stilettos meant for girls twenty years less her age.

“And here it is – the colonial style fireplace I told you about. Isn’t it darling?”

He smiles, nods his head at all the right times. Truth is, Alec decided on this place the moment Lola mentioned its street address, long before he even got into her car today. Not because of the fireplace, or the fancy high ceilings, not even for the rare broadband connection available thanks only to this building’s proximity to the high-rise district next door.

“Ooh I can see it already; this’ll be the perfect bachelor pad for a handsome young man like you. Women will happily claw each other’s eyes out for a chance to come home with you…”

Alec grins. Apparently Lola likes to flirt with men twenty years younger too.

“I know you, don’t I? You were on the news last month. You got that, um, what’s it called… that big award from the President? I never forget a face, definitely not one as perfect as yours…”

Alec laughs. “Yep, that’s me. They’re also buying me this place to live in, actually.”

To show his gratitude for saving the world, the President made public all (okay, most of) the details of the government-sanctioned Manticore project, and apologized to transgenics for treating them so heinously, instead of like the soldiers they were meant to be. And to show he means business about their freedom, he offered everyone squatting in Terminal City a chance to live and assimilate in the mainstream.

Not everyone took him up on that offer though, not trusting that ordinary people could just change overnight. Prejudice runs deep in the human psyche. So deep that some days Alec doesn’t know why they bothered to save the lot at all.

“I’m sorry for your loss, I mean, for your friends.”

Alec didn’t expect the sincere sympathy in Lola’s words. He nods quietly before heading for the full-length glass doors that hide behind them a large balcony.

“These open, right?”

Without waiting for an answer, Alec throws the French doors open, letting a cool gust of wind push its way through. This… _this_ is why he has no qualms accepting government funding for this place, given his newly homeless status and all.

This and the extremely rare ThyssenKrupp elevator, of course.

A third floor view offers nothing spectacular, not in this sector, seedy and downtrodden as it is. But then Alec isn’t looking down at all. He lifts his genetically engineered eyesight up to the neighboring sector – up at one penthouse in particular.

He smiles. Yes, this vantage point is totally worth the extremely unreasonable asking price even if he did have to pay for it.

“So when do they arrive?” Lola asks suddenly, the first question she asks him at the end of another long monologue he’s hardly paid attention to.

“Huh?”

“Your possessions?”

It takes him a couple seconds to understand what she means. “I don’t… actually _possess_ anything.”

Alec looks at her briefly, then turns back to the penthouse and murmurs quietly. “Not yet.”

 

***

**May 1, 2022**

 

 

> _If I were to sleep, I could dream._  
>  _If I were afraid, I could hide._  
>  _If I go insane, please don’t put your wires in my brain._  
>  _If I were the moon, I’d be cool._  
>  _If I were a book, I would bend for you._  
>  _If I were a good man, I’d understand the spaces between friends._

 

The first thing he puts up is the TC flag on a wall right next to his bed. The original flag, the one Joshua painted himself. He misses that old dog. Whoever said it gets easier with time, lied. The anger, the grief, the survivor’s guilt… it’s all always there, perpetual, constant. One just gets better at learning to live with it.

He buys himself a bed but hardly ever sleeps in it. Maybe because, he suspects, after the last six months he may have gotten a little unused to the idea of going to bed all by himself.

Most nights he lies on it and just stares up at the fading red, white and black – remembering the way things once were, before they… weren’t. Thinks maybe he should get it framed. Some things don’t thrive in open air and light as much as others do.

Often he turns over on his stomach to look out the balcony doors. He remembers what it felt like to not live with this incessant, ever-present weight wrapped around his ankles dragging his steps wherever he goes, to a point where he stops bothering going anywhere at all. Or maybe it’s that burden he carries on his back, forcing his proud shoulders to droop, his neck to bow so he doesn’t really see the world passing him by. Alec believes the humans call it ‘loneliness’.

Other nights, he just sits there on the floor of his sparse apartment, knees pulled up to his chest. His eyes sift through the pitch dark night to fix at the penthouse, sometimes lit, other times not, trying extremely hard not to give voice to the screams bubbling up in his throat.

By the time the sun begins its futile struggle against the dreary summer fog, he can no longer resist. He picks up his cell phone and sends a text.

_“We really should talk about this.”_

He waits, reminds himself of the early hour and not everyone is an insomniac like him. He paces the length of his loft, alternately regretting his moment of weakness and worrying if the recipient of his text is alright. It takes twelve minutes and twenty seconds before he gets a response.

_“There is nothing to talk about.”_

Alec sighs, flings his useless cell phone onto the bed and gets ready for work – his new job at the local fire station.

Being a fireman suits his irregular schedule just fine. He works twenty-four hours and gets the next forty-eight off to do whatever the hell he pleases. It’s a pretty neat gig if you ask him. The money is decent so he doesn’t have to plan any more heists or fight in cages anymore. He gets to wear ‘the’ uniform, which isn’t as uncomfortable as it looks… it’s actually worse.

The guys down at the station are cool. Most of them are closet thrill-seekers who happen to have families they’d like to go back to at the end of the day, which leaves very little in common with a lonesome transgenic soldier to bond over.

There are two others who stand apart, like him. One’s a retired Army grunt named Washington. No idea if that’s his first name or last. The other is a reformed wealth manager in his twenties who calls himself Bullish and refuses to respond to anyone who shortens the name to its most obvious short form.

Both have something to hide. And if Alec were the person he was three years ago, he’d be digging all the way to China to find out what, but the person he is now doesn’t care. If there’s one lesson everyone ought to have taken away from the civil war, it’s that everyone’s entitled to their privacy. After their right to live, of course.

“McDowell!” Washington calls out as he saunters into the locker room that morning where Alec is getting changed. Bull is sitting on the bench beside him, lacing up his boots.

“Is it true? You done already?”

Alec turns to him, bracing himself. _Here we go again_. “Hey man, I told you from the start – if it can be done, I’ll do it.”

Washington shakes his bald head, eyes blown wide. “Sonofabitch.”

Yesterday, he completed the fireman training and it took him all of two weeks to do it. The same training that an Ordinary does in fourteen weeks.

Alec holds his breath, but Washington’s face suddenly melts into a lopsided grin. “Good thing we’re fighting on the same side now, huh.”

The X5 exhales, takes the hand Washington offers almost gratefully. Once he walks away, Bull looks up at Alec and tilts his head.

“If I haven’t said it before, I’m glad you’re on our side too.”

“Of course you are,” Alec snorts and throws a towel in his face. But he senses Bull is being serious this time.

“I never told you why I quit my job on Wall Street, did I? It was because of those snake cult freaks you brought down. What’d you call them, Familiars?”

“You telling me they actually did something good?”

Bull scoffs. “One of my biggest clients was one. He let it slip about the comet, how it was going to end everything and shit. I didn’t believe him, not at first. But it did make me think. I realized how much I _hated_ my life. And if I had just a few days to live, I sure as hell wasn’t going to spend them working eighty-hour weeks, managing some billionaire’s money.”

He squints and pauses, if only to confirm what he already knows. “Except, the comet didn’t do anything, did it? Man, I wish I could’ve seen that asshole’s face that night.”

Alec sits down beside the blond man, and recalls that night with a smirk.

“Oops,” Max had said ever so eloquently, the night the comet came and went and nothing happened. Not an ounce of any deadly nerve gas it was ‘alleged’ to bring along with it.

“But they didn’t give up, you know,” Alec reminds him somberly.

To which Bullish promptly retorts, “Neither did you guys. I know that too.”

Alec nods but a little warily. Sure the Familiars were humiliated and devastated; many quit the cult for good. But the Conclave just went to Plan B for more ‘man-made’ means of extinction. They synthesized their own brand of nerve gas from hordes of their pet snakes (turns out they hadn’t just been breeding people all this time) and tried to poison all of America’s water supply.

That’s where Max’s blood came through. Using her annoyingly perfect DNA, Sandeman synthesized the antidote and they worked along with the NSA in time to stop the pandemic not just in America but across all continents.

So transgenics weren’t the villains anymore; enemy of my enemy, and all that. Ordinaries might still tiptoe around them, but at least they do it gratefully.

“ _That’s_ the good thing to come out of this whole situation,” Bull says, rising to get the rest of his gear out from his locker. “Prejudice is stupid, man.”

It was such a trivialized description of basically the last three years of his life. Friends lost, hearts broken, lives forever altered… for what?

_Yep._ Stupid sounds about right.

“Come on, Bulldog,” Alec says eliciting an eye-roll from his friend (like he’d never heard that one before). “Let’s get to work.”

The civil war took a lot out of Seattle. But now as it slowly climbs back to its feet, the city also needs to rebuild its emergency services. Alec is happy to offer his skills instead of having them rust in this time of peace. Besides, it’s nice to be seen as someone’s superhero instead of a freak. The warmth in Washington’s handshake and the hero worship in Bull’s eyes are all good reasons that keep him coming back every three days.

But some days, when he’s on call responding to a crisis, Alec feels more than just the hot lick of angry flames on patches of exposed skin. Some days he can also feel the intrusive buzzing of a hover drone forty feet above the action, specifically following _his_ every move.

It’s a keen awareness that makes the back of his neck tingle and the corners of his lips curl up into a smile which he then struggles to suppress because, hello, emergency situation?

Alec knows exactly who’s been keeping track of his shifts; who has the interest and the resources to hack into the hover drone network to keep a surreptitious eye on him. He knows that person holds his breath every time Alec runs into a building on fire, and doesn’t relax until he runs out of it safe and sound.

And some days, that is all the reason Alec needs to be a firefighter for the rest of his lonesome, unnatural life.

 

***

**May 13, 2022**

 

 

> _If you didn't care what happened to me, and I didn't care for you,_  
>  _We would zigzag our way through the boredom and pain,_  
>  _Occasionally glancing up through the rain_  
>  _Wondering which of the buggars to blame,_  
>  _And watching for pigs on the wing._

 

Alec kicks the stand on his motorbike, parks it under his building and dawdles up to his apartment. It is six in the morning and the end of another shift at the fire station.

It’s been raining for two days non-stop, now going into day three with no signs of abating. Alec peels his clothes away and flops gracelessly onto the bed to sleep for exactly two hours. At o-eight hundred he wakes and switches on the TV, hoping to catch one of those sixty-second broadcasts; hasn’t seen one in a while which could be a good thing, or it could be a very, very bad thing. Then he drops to his hands and toes on the sleek wooden floor to do three thousand push-ups.

After a quick shower, he makes himself a cup of strong black coffee, a habit he picked up in his six months living with… up in the penthouse. Speaking of which, he carries his mug to the balcony and stands there in grey sweat pants that hang precariously off his narrow waist, sharp hipbones showing, not that anyone’s around to appreciate them.

He looks back at the television screen. No joy there. Turns back to the skyscraper and works his genetically enhanced eyesight like a camera lens, adjusting the zoom until he sees a short silhouette gliding from the west end of the penthouse to the north.

Alec shakes his head, guess he isn’t the only one working all night and sleeping _after_ the sun comes up. He watches for a couple more minutes until the bedroom blinds are drawn; then heads back into his kitchen for a refill.

After all of this and it’s only just ten past nine? Alec groans softly.

Lightning cracks a whip somewhere in the sky, and thunder follows two steps behind. Another forty-eight hour break starts now, which sounded so cool back when he first started this gig but now… well…

Some days, Alec doesn’t really know what to do with himself.

He pulls on a fresh pair of jeans, his black jacket and a grey skull cap to hide his wet hair that he no longer bothers to style, then heads right back to where life as he knows it started (post Manticore) – headquarters of the notoriously unreliable and perpetually drama-inflicted Jam Pony messengers.

Sometimes also known as his second job, one he shows up to every now and then.

“Well, well, look what the cat dragged in,” is how Normal greets him.

“What can I say, Normal, I just missed you too much!” Alec grins.

“You are aware I fired your sorry ass months ago, right?”

“But am I not supposed to be your very awesome ‘honorary’ Jam Pony messenger or something?”

“Or something,” Normal drawls and turns away, preempting the possibility of any further conversation, which is just as well, as Sketchy and Original Cyndi walk over to meet him.

“Hey, you guys,” he bumps a fist with the man and plants a little peck on top of the woman’s head.

“Damn, boy, you smell like ash!” OC exclaims.

“What? Still?” Alec huffs, “Maybe I should find me one of those fruity smelling fabric softeners.”

She scoffs, “Good luck with that. You only just averted the apocalypse, ain’t fixed this cyberpunk economy yet, have you?”

“It’s what keeps me up at night,” Alec deadpans, and falls into step as they make their way to their bike lockers.

“Hey Sketch, read your new article in the Sun, man. Very cool.”

Sketchy bounces excitedly, “Thanks dude, someone had to defend our man from the sleazy politics of this city, after all.”

“Memory of a goldfish,” Original Cyndi shakes her head, her voice rife with contempt. “How quickly they forget what their friendly neighborhood vigilante’s done for this city.”

“It’s not just that,” Sketch explains, as Alec goes down on one knee to check his bicycle’s wheels. “I think it’s a deliberate and premeditated attack. First, DA Andretti declares war on the mob, she disappears. Then, Eyes Only starts investigating her disappearance and he’s come under fire. Everyone knows the new DA has his pockets lined with mob money, I bet he knows what happened to Andretti too.”

“Is any of that based in actual fact or just your spectacular speculation?”

Sketchy glares at OC indignantly. “The facts add up okay, maybe a little… circumstantially. But even if they didn’t, I’m a freelance journalist alright. I have a duty and a moral obligation to my readers to speculate.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Hey, ask Logan if you don’t believe me.”

OC turns to the one who’s yet to join this conversation. “What does your boy have to say about all of this, boo?”

Alec doesn’t look up, “Uh, I-I don’t know.”

“What do you mean?” Sketchy asks, frowning, “Haven’t you spoken to him about… _oh_.”

Alec rolls his eyes but doesn’t respond. He despises that ‘oh’. It’s the ‘oh’ he’s heard from Max, and Mole, and Original Cyndi, hell even Normal in these past few weeks, and it doesn’t get any easier.

But it’s the subtext within the ‘oh’ that rankles the most, one that says “Oh yeah, I saw that coming,” or “Oh sure, had to happen sooner or later,” or ‘Oh so surprised it lasted as long as it did.”

Like everyone expected them to fail from the get-go.

OC tried to tell him it’s not his fault (“He did it to Max too, boo,” and “It’s what he does. It’s in his nature.”) But nothing helps relieve the feelings of failure and inadequacy Alec lives with every second of every day.

Like he simply isn’t enough, like he isn’t worth the effort.

Sketchy’s apparently still processing it. “Oh,” he says again.

Alec stands up glaring at him. “My back wheel is worn. Do you have a spare I can borrow?”

“I-I do, I’ll just… yeah, I’ll be back,” Sketchy flounders for a few more seconds, like wanting to say something to console his friend somehow but comes up empty. Abruptly he turns on his heels and walks away.

“I’m sorry, Alec,” OC blurts soon as Sketchy is out of earshot. “I didn’t realize you guys haven’t spoken at all, thought he’d still have you working his cases, you being the only resident X5 left in a hundred mile radius that we know of.”

“Don’t worry about it. Sketchy had to find out sooner or later.” He shrugs and changes the subject. “So, heard from Max lately?”

It is OC’s turn to roll her eyes. “Original Cyndi’s got a thousand things to occupy her mind, body and soul besides just sitting by the phone waiting for Miss Washington DC to call home. Guess it’s time to make peace with the fact she ain’t just my home girl no more.”

Alec puts an arm around her and squeezes tight. “Max will always be your home girl _first_ , I promise you, that’s never gonna change. Besides, you have me too, sweetheart. I ain’t going nowhere.”

OC half-heartedly tries to shrug him off, “That’s ‘cause nobody else can stand your annoying little ass beside generous ol’ me and your greatest fanboy ever over here,” she points her chin at Normal and starts marching them towards the said man who’s busy handing out jobs for the day.

“These packages won’t deliver themselves, so get moving people, bip bip!”

Alec catches a package that comes flying his way, while OC picks up one assigned to her from Normal’s desk. They read their respective addresses then OC casually swaps her run with his. He frowns before looking down at the new address, then smiles at her gratefully.

Sketchy returns dragging both his and Alec’s bikes behind him. “Hey, I changed your wheel. Good as new!”

“Thanks, man,” he says, getting ready to ride off.

“Where to, bro?” Sketchy asks. But before Alec can respond, someone else answers the question for him.

“The high-rise district,” Normal drawls, barely looking up from his clipboard.

Alec blushes softly and leaves without saying goodbye.

“Go get him, boo,” OC whispers, watching him go.

The rains still haven’t let up, not that Alec notices. Delivering the package was easy. The hard part is standing below the building he once thought of as home and sort of still does ( _it’s only been like three months, give me a break_ ), and deliberating what to do next. He looks up at the penthouse again but can’t spot any movement from this angle.

Maybe no one is home.

Maybe he could sneak up for a second and lie in the bed that once was his, bury his nose in the pillow and the soft sheets, inhale deeply and fill his lungs with the citrusy scent of the man he misses with every iota of his being.

Or maybe he could leave now and not be such a psychotic creep.

Alec huffs and decides on a compromise. He digs out his phone, and with much self-derision for his lack of control, he sends another text.

_“I need to see you.”_

Immediately after hitting ‘Send’ he winces pathetically, knowing he won’t be getting a positive response and will only end up making a fool of himself.

Again.

He turns his bike around, shoulders slumped and movements erratic, and is about to ride off when his phone beeps.

It’s a text message: _“Me too. Can you come over now?”_

Alec turns around again, puts his bike on his shoulders and runs to the elevator, grinning like a total loon all the way up to the top floor.

 

***

**May 14, 2022**

 

 

> _I see the waters move above your face,_  
>  _I feel your naked hand,_  
>  _Please don't let it go again._
> 
> _Your sacrifice, that meant so much,_  
>  _Left us with no place to stand._  
>  _Please let me touch_  
>  _And let me near, let me near._

 

It is well after noon the next day when Alec walks into Jam Pony with his black sunglasses covering half a sullen face. As is customary, he first stops at Normal’s desk. The two men stand there and just… stare at each other, Alec waiting for his early morning (afternoon in this case) insult and Normal waiting for another lame-ass excuse for being late, again.

But it seems neither man has the energy to come up with anything today. Not that they apply any dazzling creativity on any other day, but today it just seems especially hard.

Three seconds later, they pretend they’ve each said something the other needs to hear and in perfect synchrony, turn away from each other.

Alec looks around for Original Cyndi but she’s probably on a run. Disappointed, he starts for his locker and that’s where he spots Sketchy. The human brightens up when he sees him.

“Hey man, try and avoid OC today if you know what’s best for you. She had to cover for you again and she’s not too psyched about it.”

“Yeah, sorry about that,” Alec says, not feeling sorry at all. “Something I had to do.”

“You mean that _other_ other thing you’re doing on the side?”

Alec takes off his shades and squints at Sketchy. The mousy little human smirks. “OC told me. Not your firefighting, that one I already knew.”

Alec shakes his head, “Never trust a girl to keep your secret, my man.” He sits on the bench to change his shoes. “You’re gonna tell me it’s a waste of time too?”

“Nope, time you got a lot of, I know that. But all that newly minted money and _this_ is how you spend it? I’m happy to take it off your hands if you like…”

Alec just throws him a lopsided grin that’s so lethargic even Sketch notices it. He sits next to Alec and leans towards him, while Alec instinctively leans away.

“Alright, talk to me.”

“About what?”

“The long face, man. You may not know this, but your face is a lot more expressive than I think your ‘makers’ intended it to be. That, and memorable, which is also not ideal in the espionage and murder business, one man’s opinion. And right now your face is telling me that you either need to talk… or you need to take a dump…”

“Maybe I need to take a life.”

“Mm, nah, I’m not seeing that.”

Alec just shakes his head and tries to stand up but for a transgenic he’s moving too slow today because Sketchy has no trouble putting a hand on his shoulder and keeping him in place.

“Seriously though, looks like you got t-blocked, didn’t you?”

“Excuse me?”

“T as in ‘talk’, get it, talk-blocked?”

Alec has no energy to tell Sketchy how much his word plays suck, and that he prefers Sketchy tongue-tied like he was the day before. “I feel your pain, brother. Maybe we shouldn’t have helped him get his penthouse and all his equipment back. He’s hiding behind it all, that’s what I think.”

“It keeps him sane; man needs a mission; any mission.”

“Maybe then you should keep yourself involved in his missions too. Don’t wait to be summoned like a foot soldier, which you technically are, but think big man. Be proactive!”

Alec rubs his brow tiredly while Sketchy rambles on pointlessly for another few seconds, until his patience wears thin and he stands abruptly. “Look Sketch, I appreciate the… uh, talk, but I just spent all night wading through a swamp in the Wisconsin mountains looking for your dead prosecutor, and she wasn’t even there, and I’m just really exhausted, okay?”

Sketchy suddenly turns serious. “I was right, then, huh? He thinks Andretti was murdered by the mob too?”

Sketchy means well, but in his excitement he’s already forgotten all about Alec and trying to make him talk; which is just as well because he’s in no mood to relive the last twenty-four hours.

Yesterday did not go as well as he’d hoped.

 

***

 

He’d found the vigilante at his work station, surrounded by his twelve hundred monitor screens all streaming different data from all across the internet. His sandy brown hair was slightly wet (like Alec’s but he’d just come in from the rain) and slicked back for a change, and his face was freshly shaved as well. He was dressed in black sweatpants two sizes too big for him, as always, and his plain white well-worn t-shirt was damp around the collar thanks to his hair again.

He must have just stepped out of the shower, Alec surmised, and wondered if anyone was around to help him… or if he was doing it all on his own.

“Hey,” he offered as a soft greeting, so as not to startle the other man.

But Logan did startle.

He wasn’t expecting Alec to show up so quickly. Of course he had no way to know the other man had been standing on the opposite street when they texted. If he guessed it, he didn’t mention it, which was just as well. This interaction was poised to be embarrassing enough for Alec as it is.

Logan glanced up at him through slightly smudged glasses briefly before looking away. “I need you to go to Wisconsin tonight to locate Andretti.”

Alec’s heart descended in slow motion to the pit of his stomach. He wasn’t even that shocked to learn he’d been granted this rare audience only for an Eyes Only thing. But hope could be a clingy little bitch sometimes.

“How’ve you been?”

“I’m texting you the exact coordinates,” Logan responded by not responding, looking down at his keyboard instead.

Alec took a second to look around. The place looked clean and well-kept. “You got some help for around here, I see.”

“You’ll need to take the ferry,” Logan continued in that annoyingly even tone, one he’d used to negotiate with the President on Max’s behalf.

“It’s the last location her cellphone was at before it switched off. I managed to hack into her phone service and track down her GPS footprint…”

“Looks like you’ve lost some weight. Who’s doing the cooking these days?”

“Stop,” Logan suddenly snapped at Alec, and for a second his eyes glinted dangerously, like he wanted to say more. But then just as instantly he calmed, taking off his glasses and looking up at Alec as if addressing a recalcitrant teenager.

When he spoke again his voice was firm but neutral. “Your concern is touching but unnecessary. I’m just watching my diet.”

“Or you’re being careless.” And not eating enough, just like he wasn’t sleeping enough, which Alec knew for a fact but wasn’t about to admit, like ever.

“It’s a side effect of the muscle atrophy, alright. Now can we please focus on Andretti? I’m afraid you won’t find her alive, but…”

“Looks to me you’re willing to accept help from complete strangers, but not from me. Why is that exactly?”

“…”

“Unless of course you only accept help that you can _pay_ for.”

Alright so he couldn’t help it. He wanted another outburst, wanted Logan to lose that fake but hurtful veneer of indifference again.

Logan swallowed, but his eyes and voice refused to waver. “I did call you here for your _help_ , Alec, in finding this poor woman’s body and giving her family some closure.”

“Evidence against the drug mafia, you mean…”

“Not just.”

Alec suddenly took a step closer and that’s when the human’s composure broke. Logan slid a few inches back in a rush, and Alec couldn’t be sure if it was reflexive or intended. Either way, it hurt. He halted in his steps.

_Closure, he says._

Another bullshit term Alec didn’t understand. Start something, fuck it up, then just declare closure and move on. Like the mess you left behind would go away on its own, no consequences, nothing. Alec wanted to scoff, maybe rail a little against the complete and utter unfairness of it all. His hands fisted by his sides as his frustrations started to boil, his insides feeling like a pressure cooker about to blow…

Alec’s cell phone beeped then, and the trance broke. It was the coordinates Logan just texted him. He put the phone away and turned to leave, but he couldn’t yet. He craned his neck to look at the only man he’d ever loved one last time.

“Maybe they don’t _want_ closure, Logan. Maybe they want to keep hope alive, for just a little while longer.”

 

***

 

“HOT RUN!”

Alec starts and lets Normal’s high-pitched voice drag him back to the present.

“Package for Sixteenth and Broad, who wants it?”

“I got it,” he calls out, cutting off Sketchy mid-sentence, and steps up to grab the job before anyone else can even begin to make up an excuse to not do it.

“Hey,” Normal refuses to let go of the package that Alec now holds from the other side. “I have another one going to the high-rise district in a bit.”

Seriously, why does everyone here need to know everyone else’s business?

Alec just shakes his head wearily, yanks the package out of Normal's hands, and turns to leave, “I’m good.”

 

***

**May 30, 2022**

 

 

> _Where were you when I was burned and broken?_  
>  _While the days slipped by from my window watching._  
>  _Where were you when I was hurt and helpless?_  
>  _Because the things you say and the things you do surround me._  
>  _While you were hanging yourself on someone else's words,_  
>  _Dying to believe in what you heard,_  
>  _I was staring straight into the shining sun._

 

The gym down at the station is his favorite place to hang these days.

Here he comes to work off his… particular issues and frustrations which may or may not be sexual in nature. He’s been getting bigger and stronger for all the time he’s spent here these past months. Especially under the tutelage of his good friend Washington, a man whose quiet company Alec finds infinitely comforting.

“This ain’t like department training, son,” he said to Alec one day after an especially punishing session with the bench press.

“You can’t cram all night to get an A in triceps the next morning. And you can’t work out for fourteen hours non-stop expecting to get fourteen days’ worth of results the next day. You gotta let your body rest, grow accustomed to the training.”

“But why the hell not? I am healthier, stronger, faster…”

Washington had smirked at the younger man. “Tell me something: can a transgenic birth a baby in four point five months?”

Alec looked it up. And sadly no, they couldn’t.

Original Cyndi likes to squeeze his expanding biceps, or at least she tries. She calls the gym his ‘safe place’ – which is not all that far from the truth. He often finds himself wandering down to it even on his days off, and today is no different.

No Washington today. So he commandeers the boxing ring and whales away at a punching bag. He wears nothing but a pair of grey sweatpants, showing off his toned chest, muscles rippling with every punch, shimmering under a layer of sweat that drips off his forehead and nose, and abs so hard you could bounce a nickel off of them.

Several thousand blows later, there is only so much a poor punching bag made in China can take. It bursts, ripping in two places, and the entire dojo is covered with sand and sawdust.

“Crap, not again,” he grumbles to himself.

“Want something your own size to vent on?”

Alec grins, he doesn’t need to look at the person to know who it is. Schooling his face into a mild smirk, he turns to face Max. “If you’re referring to yourself, I don’t know if you fit the bill, with your new sedentary lifestyle and all…”

“Wanna bet?”

Alec nods at the suit standing guard behind her. “Don’t you need to clear it with your babysitter first?”

She actually looks miffed at that. “He’s Secret Service, and he answers to _me_ , not the other way round.”

“Well, in that case maybe you should re-think his uniform. Seriously Max, a bow tie?”

“We were just under cover at the… ugh, never mind. You up for a round or what?”

She smiles deviously and takes off her jacket, revealing a sleeveless black form-fitting top over perfectly tailored slacks that would be in clear danger of getting ripped but she doesn’t seem to care.

They go a few rounds until Alec finds himself flat on his back, Max bearing down on his throat with an effortlessness Alec will always envy.

“Alright, I give!”

“Say uncle!”

“Seriously? Aren’t we too old for that shit?”

Max presses down harder at his jugular.

“Alright, alright! Uncle Sam of the United completely fucked up States of America. Let go…”

“You’re so stupid,” Max laughs and backs off, allowing Alec to stand up.

Alec smirks when abruptly she turns back into a ‘girl’ and starts fussing over her hair. “You know I hate that smirk of yours. What?”

He just grins more and by the time she realizes her tactical error, it’s too late. “No, don’t even think ab– ACK!! Alec!!” Max squeals when he grabs her into an inescapable bear hug, slathering his sweat and grime all over her bare skin and brand new pants.

An hour later, she sits on Alec’s bed in his apartment, gazing up at the flag Joshua painted (now framed in clear glass) and tries not to let the tears fall. Alec watches her from the kitchen island where he’s starting dinner for the two of them.

When she turns to him, her eyes are moist. He knows Max doesn’t like to be caught in her moments of weakness, least not anymore. So he quickly looks away. “Sorry about the onions,” he mutters, giving her an out before going back to chopping more vegetables for a Bolognese recipe.

Max pulls it together then comes over to perch on a bar stool opposite him. “So, when you said you were going to feed me, I didn’t think you were being literal.”

“Why not? I love cooking for my peeps,” he winks at her and then continues more seriously, “It sort of calms me down, or something.”

“You mean you don’t just whale away at a punching bag?”

He makes a face at her and ambles over to the freezer, pulls out two beers and throws one to Max. “Let’s just say, I’m diversifying my interests.”

_Anything to fill the emptiness, make the loneliness easier to bear…_

Max twists open her beer, takes a big gulp and smiles, which Alec assumes to be tacit approval. So he carries on, giving voice to thoughts he hasn’t articulated to anyone before.

“It’s like, for the first time in my life, I’m doing something just for the heck of it. Not because it’s a matter of life and death, you know? For the first time I’m in no hurry to get to the finish line, am not looking for a golden shortcut, not that there even is one – not if you want it done right. I actually just get to enjoy the ride, you know; and the taste of victory when everything falls in place perfectly and I know I didn’t screw it up. It’s…”

He looks up then to see Max watching him very intently; it makes him blush. “Yeah, whatever, it’s… so long as it’s edible I guess.”

Max laughs. “Don’t do that, Alec. This is _really_ cool. I’m _so_ proud of you.”

He blushes again, “Thanks. Probably something I picked up when I was with…” and then he halts abruptly, not wanting to go there tonight.

But Max doesn’t get the hint, not right away anyway. “Oh yeah, me too, but it didn’t stick. And I was with him for two years, you only had like six mo–”, stops when she spots Alec’s face starting to drop again.

She winces apologetically and changes the subject. “So, these new digs, do you like it?”

Alec shrugs nonchalantly as he grabs a skillet and the olive oil cruet, “I’ve lived in worse.”

“It’s got more personality than the other place you used to shack up in before. Actually that was always Brain’s place, never yours, even after he was gone.”

“Duh! Can you think of anyone who could dwarf that guy’s personality?”

They spend a few seconds in silence, honoring another fallen Manticore comrade.

Max stands up after a while and goes out to the balcony. Alec bites his lip, knowing what’s to follow and that there is simply no way to avoid it.

At first she notices nothing, simply leans against the railing looking more relaxed than she has all evening. She drinks from her beer and watches the bustling street below as folks head back to their homes at the end of the day. She shakes her hair out and stretches languidly, throwing her head back.

That’s when she straightens up, before slowly turning around to glare at Alec, who’s cringing already. “You wanna come out here and talk to me about this like a man?”

_Not really, no._ Alec sighs and starts to make his way over to her; like he has a choice.

“Get me another beer while you’re at it.”

_Yes, ma’am._ Sullenly, Alec turns back around to grab two more beers, switches off the gas stove as well because, yeah, this is going to take a while, and then walks out into the balcony.

“I see now why you chose this place. Do you even realize how creepy this is?”

“I didn’t do it on purpose, this was just…”

“A coincidence? This _and_ an elevator? Do you actually expect me to believe that?”

Alec sighs again and takes a big swig of his beer. He’s done explaining himself, and apparently Max can see that. She shakes her head in obvious disappointment which Alec tries his best to ignore.

“So, how’s school?”

He doesn’t want to talk about that either, but mumbles a response anyway, “Starting third semester in a couple of weeks.”

Max frowns again. “Let me guess, you want to finish a four year master’s program in one year or less.”

“What can I say – genetically engineered noggin and all that.”

“Does _he_ know you’re doing it?”

Alec sulkily shakes his head.

“When was the last time you guys spoke?”

“Last night.”

Max blinks, “That I did not see coming.”

“It’s not what you think,” Alec stops her before she gets ahead of herself.

He explains to her how he’s been helping Eyes Only collect evidence against a drug cartel that had a Seattle DA killed last year. And once he gets talking, it’s like the floodgates open. Before he knows it, he’s telling Max all about how every time Alec does try to talk about anything _other_ than the case, the man shuts down or kicks him out of the penthouse.

“Everyone left, either with you, or went their separate ways. And with his exoskeleton destroyed – he doesn’t have a choice so he’s stuck with me. But if he had a choice, I think he’d rather pretend I didn’t exist at all. He doesn’t even look at me, not even when I stand right in front of him.”

Max shows a little sympathy at that. “Back when we first met, he was like that with me too. Took him a whole year to get over himself and let me in.”

“Maybe that’s just it. Maybe he’s still in love with you…”

Max suddenly puts a hand over his. “Don’t even, bro. We were long over before you and he started seeing each other.”

Alec believes her. He looks up at the penthouse again. It’s after eight and the lights are out – which means the man either went to sleep or left to go out. It is a Friday night after all. Maybe he’s meeting a friend for a drink, maybe a special someone even. Asha still keeps trying her luck with him – maybe she’s getting some tonight.

Max senses his despondence and as always her first reaction is instinctual, unadulterated anger. “You know what I’m going to say.”

“Then don’t say it.”

That shuts her up, but only for a few seconds. “Did you ever stop to think that maybe this is a good thing? Ever since you got out of Manticore, you’ve been on the run, Alec, fighting for survival. For once you get to slow down and actually have a _life_ of your own.”

“I thought I _was_ building a life, Max, with him,” Alec whispers, still staring up at the penthouse.

“No, you weren’t, Alec. You were building a life _around_ him, centered on him, it was all about _him_ and it wasn’t healthy, not for you. But you’ve got this second chance now, please don’t squander it. Forget that man with his stupid martyr complex up in that ivory tower of his, and focus on _yourself_ for a change.”

Alec bristles. “I’m trying, aren’t I?”

Max points up to the penthouse behind her. “No, you’re not! You’re not _nearly_ trying enough. You’re practically stalking him for fuck’s sake! Don’t you get it, Alec – he doesn’t want you in his life anymore!”

Alec flinches violently at that. He wants to tell her to shut the fuck up, except he isn’t so sure anymore that she _is_ dead wrong. And maybe, just maybe, he needs to hear this.

“You know what your new life needs? More of _you_ in it.”

Alec still doesn’t reply, and at that point Max seems to give it up, for now. She is no fool. She can see exactly when Alec shutters down, desperate to protect that tiny bitch of a hope he still harbors deep inside.

“Here,” she takes out a small and nearly flat black box from her purse and throws it at Alec who catches without even looking at it. “I got it for your hero, since he didn’t have the time to come to DC to collect it himself. I’m flying back at o-five hundred, won’t get the chance to see him this time.”

Alec looks at it briefly before pocketing it in his denim jacket. But Max isn’t done trying his patience (and his feelings) just yet.

“You’re too alone, Alec. Please, I don’t want you to isolate yourself.”

Alec exhales heavily, and opens his arms. “I’m not, I swear. Besides, I have you, Maxie, who needs anyone else?”

She surrenders and walks into the hug, grumbling quietly, “Hate it when you call me that.”

He chuckles, “Sorry, Major Guevara.”

“Shut up, we’re not at war anymore.”

“Okay, Senator Guevara.”

She punches him and pulls away, while he struggles to catch his breath.

 

***

**June 5, 2022**

 

 

> _Now we're turning, towards the sun, unfolding everyday_  
>  _From out behind, the clouded mind,_  
>  _With more than words to say._
> 
> _We're half-naked souls and a harmony_  
>  _Is a song of tears, all washed into the sea,_  
>  _As we stand along the shoreline._

 

Alec wraps up four back-to-back shifts at the fire station, which basically means a non-stop ninety-six hours (some people think it’s okay to ask him to do their shifts because apparently his genetically enhanced ass can take the stress). He is heading home, exhausted, not having slept in over a week. It’s not fair to put all of it on the job though; he’s been studying really hard to wrap up his semester early and all that.

Alec is about to straddle his motorbike when his cellphone rings.

It’s _him_ again.

“I found a mole inside the cartel – he’s willing to testify. But we need to go get him from Bainbridge Island now. Can you come over?”

“Can it wait? I just need a couple hours to…”

“No it can’t, get here now.”

Alec is so tired.

Physically he’s tired, starting to feel the tremors because he hasn’t taken his tryptophan in a while too. And mentally he’s tired of being ordered around, taken for granted, all the while being completely ignored, without a word of thanks or any kindness whatsoever.

He’s tired of being on his own, eating alone, sleeping alone, watching a stupid building from two miles away hoping, wishing, but still alone. He’s tired of not being acknowledged for the man he has become, for the man he wants to be. He’s tired of being in love with a man who has very conveniently moved on, who clearly doesn’t give a damn. And right about now he just wants to kill something, very bad, but he’d settle for kicking it and yelling profanities at it too.

He is tired, and he just wants to close his eyes and go to sleep for a year.

Instead, he sighs and turns his bike around. “I’ll be there in five.”

They board the ferry to Bainbridge Island with Logan’s car (the one that’s been recently retrofitted with special controls again) and stay in it. The journey so far has been eerily silent – Logan still not saying anything that’s not related to the mission and Alec simply not up to the effort.

He places an elbow on the side door, rests the side of his face into his hand and closes his eyes.

“You alright?” Logan asks tentatively. Maybe he can’t take any more of this out-of-character behavior after all.

Alec barely shifts. “Peachy.”

“Ha-have you taken your tryptophan for the week?”

Alec exhales heavily. “Your concern is touching but unnecessary,” he says, echoing the very words Logan had thrown at him not too long ago.

The vigilante bristles visibly, and it makes Alec softly smirk. But he decides not to be completely cruel after all.

“I just got off a long shift. Mind if I take a quick nap? Wake me when we hit land again?”

“Uh, sure,” Logan says and quickly looks away, even though Alec can see he’s agitated, like there is something else he longs to say but can’t. Or won’t.

He smiles, muses quietly to himself about how adorable Logan looks with his hair wildly astray, as usual, and his smooth, square jaw; chewing at his lower lip like a nervous teenager on his first date.

He closes his eyes and lets the darkness take him. Feels so good to surrender to sleep, something he hasn’t been able to do in three months. Maybe he feels safer, maybe it’s the proximity to Logan after all this time, maybe the two things are intimately related… either way, it doesn’t last for more than five minutes.

A couple of muffled pops that sound incredibly familiar send his spider-sense tingling and his eyes shoot open. A split-second later, the two bullets hit the left side of their car, Logan’s side.

“Get down!” Alec yells, and pushes Logan’s head down as he tries to locate where the gunfire is coming from.

In hindsight, he should have spent more time doing reconnaissance and less time snoozing. He probably should have spent more time listening to Logan’s ramblings about the case too; they may have been able to suss out a trap _before_ they were caught in it.

“There is no damn mole, is there?” Logan wheezes.

In response, Alec puts a hand on top of his head and pushes him further down and out of range of the continuing gunfire.

There are three gunmen, far as Alec can tell. He scans the rest of the boat for activity: there are maybe ten other ordinaries including passengers and the crew but they’re too far to hear any gunshots because of the silencers. Just as well, they’re probably safest that way. It’s an off-peak hour, which is why it was chosen to draw Logan out in the first place.

“Don’t move until I say so,” Alec orders and gets out of the car himself.

“Wait, where are _you_ going?” Logan asks, and Alec sees the concern brewing in his eyes.

“You brought me along for a reason, yes? Shut up and let me do my job,” Alec hisses and a second later he’s crouching behind an SUV, waiting for an opening to get the jump on one of the goons closest to them.

Taking the first six-foot-five man out is easy as pie. He grabs the dead man’s gun and aims at a second assailant about to take a shot at Logan from the right side of the car.

That leaves the third assassin. Alec should have been paying more attention to him instead of worrying about how many bullets he had left in his appropriated weapon. A momentary lapse is all it takes.

Two shots are fired within nano-seconds of each other – and as luck would have it, both find their target.

“Alec!!”

The final assassin drops dead instantly with a hole in his forehead. Alec doesn’t see but hears the scumbag’s body hit the ferry’s floor, and then he hears Logan screaming his name, a second after the assassin’s bullet punches him squarely in the chest.

The momentum sends him tumbling backwards to the starboard edge where his left foot gets tangled in a coil of rope. Next thing he knows, he’s falling, flying backwards through the cold air and fog, until he hits the cold and prickly surface of the ocean.

_No! Alec! ALEC!!_

A part of him is relieved, relieved he doesn’t have to fight anymore, doesn’t have to stick around to survive the deaths of his friends and loved ones anymore, doesn’t have to find things to keep himself occupied with, just to not be thinking about the people he’s lost anymore.

He’s even glad he doesn’t have to take the semester tests anymore, doesn’t have to feel his heart break every time Logan turns away from him, rejecting his feelings again and again.

He’s glad he finally gets to close his eyes and just… go to sleep.

 

***

**June 5, 2022 (Logan’s POV)**

 

 

> _You'll see, you feel like a banner,_  
>  _Unfurled and gently blown,_  
>  _And there before your opening eyes_  
>  _The self you've never known._
> 
> _They're never going to make it easy_  
>  _Of this you can be sure._  
>  _You feel untied, beatified_  
>  _And loved for ever more._

 

Logan watches Alec get shot in the heart and fall overboard. And for a second he just freezes.

Time slows down and loses all meaning. He remembers his voice just long enough to call for Alec, hoping it’s all just a hallucination borne of his addled mind; he’s had several of those in recent months. Surely he didn’t just see Alec go overboard. Surely he’s not… he’s still… isn’t he?

He calls out Alec’s name over and over again, but gets no response.

Gunshot to the heart – no one survives that, not even an X5. It’s what took Max away from him three years ago. It’s what took Joshua away from all of them last year, and now it has taken Alec from him – another person he’s loved and lost.

But that’s not really true, is it?

He’d given Alec up months ago, soon as he lost the use of his legs again. Being a physical cripple again had crippled his feelings too, allowed his ego to take over. No – it wasn’t a bullet that took his love away; it was his own damn pride. The bullet had just ensured he’d never get a chance to make amends again.

Logan is hyperventilating now, hands trembling, fingers struggling to find purchase with his door handle. The longer it takes to free himself of the confines of the car, the faster his panic escalates.

Images of Alec’s face contorted in pain as the bullet tore through him, his limbs flailing as he started to fall… Logan’s vision grows blurry and it doesn’t help with the damn handle either. Until, at last, the scream stuck in his throat breaks free and with it the lock gives way too.

He can’t believe this is happening.

Logan tumbles out of the car, literally, upper torso first because the rest of him is so fucking useless, and uses his palms to break his fall. He loses his glasses in the process, not that they were helping any. He probably should have tried to get his wheelchair from the back but that would’ve taken time and besides at this point he really doesn’t give a fuck.

Logan brings all his upper body strength to bear and drags himself across the jagged floor of the ferry to the edge where he’d last seen Alec. It takes him a while and he keeps screaming for help even though his voice is barely more than a whisper. By the time he makes it there and manages to pull himself up to look out into the dark murky waters, he’s completely drained.

His eyesight is worse than ever, what with all the fog and sweat conspiring to wash away his terrible flashbacks but failing miserably. There is a loud ringing in his ears, like a fire engine racing through his brain, flashing red and drowning out every other sound in existence.

Not seeing anything, not hearing anything, Logan lets go of the railing, collapsing to the deck like a marionette whose strings have been suddenly, ruthlessly, slashed. He’s numb, cold, just like he was after Max ‘died’ – he can’t move, he can’t speak, doesn’t want to, and is pretty sure he never will again.

He just sits there and stares away at nothing, wishing Alec had left one of the assassins alive so they could have finished the damn job.

“Alec…” the name rolls of his tongue pathetically, hopelessly, all by itself.

Suddenly, the aforementioned hoists himself up over the railing and topples back into the boat before coming to rest on his haunches beside Logan, panting.

“You called?”

It takes him a decade, give or take a few days, to make himself believe in what his incompetent eyes and ears seem to be telling him. A completely drenched and dripping X5 is sitting next to him, his full plum lips turned up into that annoying little smirk Alec McDowell is known for.

And still Logan just stares, silent, and wide-eyed. Then suddenly he launches at the Alec, screaming at the top of his lungs for the world to hear.

“Bastard!” and  
“I hate you!” and  
“Fucking transgenics!” and  
“What the hell is wrong with you people?”

He pounds his fists against Alec’s chest and shoulders with all his might as the other man just sits there and lets him.

“How dare you do this to me again?? How could you…? Sonofa… I hate you! I hate you so fucking much!”

At some point Alec decides he’s had enough. He grabs Logan and pulls him against himself. The human is shocked into stillness for all of a second, before he starts struggling against the arms holding him, still trying his best to hurt Alec as much as he can.

He is angry. Not just angry, he’s furious! At Alec, at the fucking drug mafia, at his stupid legs, at himself… and he doesn’t deserve to be held so tenderly by this man and he surely doesn’t deserve the kind, soothing words he’s whispering softly in his ear.

“Shh, it’s okay, Lo, shhh…”

“Don’t fucking shush me!!” he screams and tries to pull away again but to no avail.

Logan feels his wrists gripped tight, his arms being twisted behind his back. Alec crushes the human to his own chest and holds Logan’s hands at the base of his spine where shards of another bullet from years ago still remain to torment him.

The grip is inescapable, as it’s been genetically engineered to be. Curses spew from Logan’s mouth in an unbroken litany and he’s contemplating biting Alec’s shoulder to try and break free. But as if reading his mind, Alec transfers both his wrists to one hand and uses his free hand to take Logan by the jaw. Then before he knows it, Alec closes his mouth over Logan’s roughly and silences him.

He kisses him, again and again and again. Logan gasps and Alec uses the opportunity to slip his tongue into the open mouth, making itself comfortable like it fucking belongs there. Logan closes his eyes, tears finally dripping out the corners to run down his face and into their conjoined mouths. He tastes the salt mixing with the familiar and oh-so-missed taste of Alec’s mouth. And it only makes him sob harder.

“Shh, I’m here, baby. I’m here… I’m okay, shh, we’re both okay.”

Logan can’t be sure when or precisely why, but at some point, he decides to give in and really listen to the words being poured down his throat, and his panic starts to dissipate. The muscles straining in his back start to unwind under the firm hand that repeatedly rubs them up and down. And once Alec lets go of his mouth, Logan lets his head fall forward until it rests on Alec’s shoulder. His breathing is still erratic but growing heavier, as do his tear-soaked eyelids.

“Alec?” he whispers quietly, meek and afraid he won’t hear anything back. That this is all just another hallucination; a really, really vivid dream of someone who’s no longer here.

“Right here, Logan, right here,” the not-hallucination responds promptly, and Logan almost believes it.

Minutes pass, hours maybe – they stay there, just like that, until the sun peaks out from behind the clouds and it gets bright, until Alec practically dries out, until Logan’s breathing returns to normal.

Until Logan starts to fidget and reminds Alec it’s not really playing fair to be holding a crippled man immobile like that. Alec lets go but his hands still linger, choosing to stroke the human’s back and shoulders instead.

“I saw you get shot.”

Alec clears his throat. “Yeah, about that,” he puts a hand inside his jacket and pulls out a small, nearly flat black box with a bullet embedded in the heart of it. He opens it and shows it to Logan.

It’s the Presidential Medal of Freedom – the highest civilian award in the United States, or whatever is left of it.

“Max left this for you. I’ve been carrying it around for weeks hoping to be… summoned and, I guess I was waiting for us to get back to Seattle but…”

Alec makes a sheepish face as he pries the bullet out of the medal leaving a nine millimeter hole in its center, “Uh, sorry I broke it.”

Logan looks at it and back up at Alec. A multitude of emotions congregate inside his gut, little sparks growing stronger and brighter and warmer, blooming outwards so they wash all over his cold, trembling and now halfway drenched body (what with Alec still holding Logan tightly to himself).

He feels _grateful_ … something he hasn’t felt in a long time, even though his mother raised him to be and he was too, until she died. He feels _fortunate_ … something that before the Pulse always came with a generous side of guilt; and with a dogged sense of purpose after it.

But more than anything, he feels _humbled_ … to have had the chance to love, not once but twice, to have been loved in return, and to be given more second chances at love than he probably deserves.

His eyes fill up with tears again, and this time he’s the one who leans in to kiss Alec with everything he’s got.

 

***

**June 8, 2022**

 

 

> _Sooner than wait for a break in the weather,_  
>  _I’ll gather my far-flung thoughts together._  
>  _Speeding away, on the wind to a new day_  
>  _And if you’re alone,_  
>  _I’ll come home._

 

Around noon, Alec’s cellphone rings but he ignores it. Whoever is trying to reach him is adamant though, and dials Logan’s landline next to leave a message.

“Alec McDowell, I know you’re there! Pick up the damn phone, lover boy.”

Logan lets out a breathless snort and drops his forehead to the pillow underneath him. His lover behind him, and also currently inside him, has no intentions to stop though. He lowers his mouth to kiss the crook of Logan’s sweat-soaked neck, biting the sensitive skin there avidly, leaving his mark on the man he doesn’t intend to let go ever again.

Logan whimpers, gripping the rails of his headboard with both hands until he’s white-knuckling around them. Another couple of pillows have been strategically placed under his stomach, arching his back beautifully. Earlier, Alec had pulled his lover’s legs apart to make space for the X5 between them. He grips the said legs at the knee joints and with every thrust he pushes them further apart, boring deeper into the gorgeous ass.

“Look, I got your ass covered here with Normal, as always.” The female, slightly nasal, voice continues on the machine. "Original Cyndi actually considers it a part of her official job description, covering for all you transgenics.”

Both men chuckle at that, though Alec doesn’t let it sway his rhythm as he continues to fuck Logan, hitting his sweet spot with excruciating precision on every alternate thrust. How does he know? Because Logan fails to bite back his moans on every such occasion.

“Bet it’s all nice and comfy again up in the ivory tower again, seeing how you’ve been shacked up with your boy for three days and three nights. Bet you’re making up for all the lost time right now, as I speak.”

Alec pats Logan’s right buttock couple times before cupping it possessively, “You bet I am.”

Logan blushes prettily, and it fuels Alec’s lust even more. He’s glad he’s situated behind Logan right now though; the human would smack that satisfied smirk right off Alec’s face if he sees it.

“Now you better be careful with him, boo, or you might wear him down. Ordinaries are kinda fragile, you know.”

“Hey!” Logan exclaims, even as his protest promptly cross-fades into a particularly heartfelt moan.

“No offense, Lo’,” Original Cyndi says almost as if she just heard Logan. And then suddenly she switches gears, “Anyway. I just wanted to make sure you remembered to go take your tests. Please tell me you at least remembered to reschedule them?”

_Oh crap._

Alec did forget, but rescheduling shouldn’t be a problem, and OC knows it too. He also knows her better than she thinks he does. She wouldn’t be bugging him right now with something that can clearly wait. Nope, she’s done this on purpose – to get him to tear this last wall down between Logan and himself, knowing he didn’t have the guts to do it himself, yet.

She hangs up and as expected, Logan’s curiosity is piqued. “Tests? What tests?”

Alec is breathless as he struggles to hit pause on his libido. “It’s nothing. We’ll talk about it later, okay? In case you didn’t notice, I’m in the middle of something… ah, very important right now.”

But Logan’s not letting it slide. “Are you sick?”

Alec grimaces. “Not that kind of tests, baby. I… uh,” he’d really hoped to be able to share this with Logan in a more face-to-face setting. But, oh well, this will just have to do.

“I’ve been going to school – University of Washington – to get, um, like a Master’s degree.”

Logan twists his neck further to look into Alec’s flushed face, hazel eyes wide with wonder and what Alec likes to think of as approval. “That’s fantastic, baby, a degree in what? Is that what Max meant by the ‘other’ other thing you’re doing?”

“Um, yeah, I’ll tell you all about it later baby, come here…” He leans in to capture Logan’s mouth again but the human just tilts his head away. Clearly the investigator in him isn’t done investigating yet.

“I don’t understand why you didn’t tell me though.”

“You weren’t exactly talking to me, were you?”

Logan pouts. He doesn’t like to be reminded of all the months, days and hours they spent apart because he’d presumed all by himself that his quadriplegia would be an unbearable ‘burden’ for his allegedly too-young-to-be-responsible boyfriend.

“And what about now? You’ve been back three days, Alec.”

Alec is still not sure how to confess the complete truth. “Look i-it’s not a big deal, just something to kill time with, that’s all.”

“You mean you actually have time to kill after your two jobs and your work for Eyes Only? Maybe I’m not using you enough then…”

“Clearly you’re not,” Alec grunts unhappily because he really just wants to move again. “God, baby, can we please be done with the chit-chat? I’m trying to fuck you here.”

Logan chuckles and squeezes around him, giving him permission to carry on at last, which Alec happily does.

He pulls out of Logan before forcefully pounding right back in, taking his lover by surprise because these past three days Alec has mostly erred on the genteel side and Logan’s been the one ordering him to go harder (‘So is the six-pack just for show or what?’), and faster (‘Maybe I should find me an X7’) and rougher (‘I won’t break, Alec, promise…’).

Alec leans forward until he is chest to back with Logan, and pries his lover’s hands from the headboard to entwine the long, too thin fingers with his own. Logan’s eyes fall close, his mouth gapes open, and his head is thrown back in absolute ecstasy for the next several-teen minutes; gripping his lover’s hands back and hanging on for dear life.

Alec comes a couple of times in that duration, coating Logan’s insides with his seed, making his lover also come so hard he can feel it in his otherwise insensate toes.

“Ah! F-fuck, that… that was…” Logan gasps as he feels another sharp tingle course through his limbs. For a precious couple of seconds, he swears he can even flex his shins, just a little.

“It doesn’t hurt, does it?”

“Even if it did, it’d be something,” Logan rasps back, craning his neck again. The soldier lowers his face and they kiss tenderly.

The first time it happened three days ago, Logan was so shocked by it he’d broken down and sobbed uncontrollably. Alec held him like a child, rocking him, letting him expend his pent-up rage and feelings of helplessness to finally reach the grim but essential stage of acceptance.

Now when it happens, when that electrifying tingle makes Logan’s legs come alive fleetingly, the tears he cries are of back-breaking pleasure and overwhelming joy. They still don’t understand how it’s even possible, but it’s all Logan wants to feel over and over again. Alec is of course very happy to oblige, again, and again and again.

“I love you, Alec McDowell,” Logan mumbles sleepily once Alec pulls him into his arms before drawing up the covers.

The words take his breath away, even if it isn’t the first time he’s hearing them. “I love you more, Logan Cale,” he whispers back, pressing a kiss on top of Logan’s head. “And I’m never ever gonna stop.”

Couple hours later, when hazel eyes flutter open again Alec is still wrapped around his boyfriend, watching him lovingly.

“Do you want to see my new place?”

Logan blinks, and Alec senses his anxiety in that tiny gesture. The usually articulate man opens his mouth to say something, closes it, opens it again, then finally goes with an “uh, sure,” looking terribly disappointed with himself for that effort.

Alec wants to smile at his adorable lover, but instead just licks his lips. He’s nervous too. “I-I just thought maybe, you can come and… maybe… help me pack?”

Logan couldn’t have possibly grinned any wider.

They shower and change into their outdoor clothes. Logan puts on a steel grey turtleneck sweater with black jeans that once wouldn’t have fit him over his exoskeleton. Alec has no choice but to wear the blue jeans and leather jacket (now adorned with a bullet hole) he came wearing three days ago. But he discards the black t-shirt for a sky-blue one that he apparently forgot to pack when he moved out, and Logan never threw out.

“Come here and make yourself useful,” Logan calls to him, pointing at the laces on his brown suede shoes.

“Sure!” Alec runs over and kneels before Logan’s wheelchair to tie his laces. He looks up to find Logan watching him contemplatively.

“What?”

Logan shakes his head a little sadly, “Nothing just… I hope you know what you’re getting yourself into, Alec.”

Alec doesn’t respond to that, simply leans forward and kisses Logan. “Come on, you have to see it in daylight.”

It’s a nice sunny day for a change, no rainclouds on the horizon. They drive to the neighboring sector where his apartment is. Logan is obviously excited to see it for the first time, and can’t stop asking questions about it.

“You actually have an elevator?! In sector four?”

“Uh-huh.”

He thinks it over while Alec concentrates on the road ahead. A second later, he’s squinting mischievously. “You fantasized about me coming over for a booty call, didn’t ya?”

Alec turns toward him, eyes brimming with emotions he can’t put into words. “Not just a booty call, baby.”

He’d dreamt of a million different scenarios that would someday bring Logan back to his doorstep, back into his life. And he sure didn’t want a stupid flight of stairs to come in his way.

In response, Logan takes Alec’s hand and plants a soft kiss on his knuckles, before promptly looking away to hide his own eyes glittering behind the still smudged glasses.

“Are you going to keep it?”

“It’s mine to keep. Besides, we might need it if your location ever gets compromised again. I have broadband too, you know.”

“Bullshit.”

Alec laughs.

It’s after five PM when they reach their destination. After looking around briefly inside the studio, Logan wheels himself into the balcony, looks up at his own abode up in the sky and narrows his eyes at Alec. The younger man sheepishly scratches the top of his head and escapes to the kitchen.

“I’m starving. You want something to eat?” Without looking back to acknowledge Logan’s smirk of amusement, he starts pulling out ingredients from the fridge for dinner.

“Uh, what are you doing?” Logan asks when Alec starts to slice up some onions on a chopping board with a precision that would put the best chefs in Europe to shame.

“What’s it look like, baby, I’m fixing dinner! How does steak sound? Let’s see, what’d you call it… Chateaubriand?”

Logan’s eyes go wide and slightly skeptical.

“What? I watched when you cooked.”

“Oh, you watched alright, watched my ass in an apron!”

Alec snorts and doesn’t bother to deny it.

“But I’ll admit you do seem to have new skills with the chopper.”

Alec feels warmth creep up to his cheeks at those words of praise. He hears an unasked question in them as well.

He’s going to have to explain to the man how he kept himself busy just to keep himself from going insane. But he doesn’t want to do it in a way that makes Logan feel any guiltier than he does already.

“Fine, the Food Network’s the only free cable channel I get here, alright! Wine? Red or white?”

Logan chuckles and asks for red. Alec brings out a bottle of contraband Merlot he’s been saving just for this day.

The wine does its trick. Logan spins round and round a couple of times in his wheelchair – it’s the first time that Alec has seen him be so playful and carefree while confined to that thing. He throws his head back every time he laughs, which Alec knows is a very, very good thing. Alec gets him up to speed on all the antics he’s gotten up to with Bull and Washington lately, and they’re not even that funny. But Logan laughs for him anyway.

He suspects Logan is happy, and that is enough to make him happy too.

Then suddenly he isn’t laughing anymore. Alec looks up from his skillet, where he’s bringing the wine sauce to a boil, to find Logan still as a sculpture. He seems to be completely taken by something he hadn’t spotted until now.

It’s a stack of books on the floor sitting on the right side of the low bed, and also partially hidden by it. The right side is where Alec usually sleeps. No one knows that better than Logan.

Alec bites his lip. He watches Logan slowly wheel himself forward so he can read the titles printed on the stems better. There is a library label on each one of them, some from the Seattle Public library; others from the University library.

‘Pathology and Intervention in Musculoskeletal Rehabilitation’, and  
‘Rehabilitation of the Spine: A practitioner’s Manual’, and  
‘Physical Rehabilitation’, to name a few.

Alec takes a swig of his beer and waits, anxiously waiting to see how Logan will react. Keeps stirring the sauce instead of gawking expectantly at Logan, even though he’d much rather be gauging his lover’s reaction.

It takes a couple minutes before Logan clears his throat. “Are you studying to be… a…?”

“Physiotherapist. Yes. Figured it’ll come in handy.”

Logan is quiet for the longest time.

“All of this… because I said you were irresponsible and unreliable, isn’t it?”

“Well, you also said I was selfish and reckless,” Alec quips softly, winks at Logan to indicate he doesn’t mean it in a resentful way.

Logan swallows hard. “So – the multiple jobs, the firefighting, the cooking, and… now this… just to prove me wrong,” he doesn’t frame it as a question.

“ _No_ ,” Alec says firmly, and maybe even in a bit of a panicked frenzy. “To prove that I can change, for _you_ , that I can be what you need me to be.”

Logan looks down into his lap, at his dormant legs. For a second, Alec doesn’t think he’d ever look back up again. But then he does, smiling ever so softly, at no one in particular. It’s a smile fraught with insecurity, and Alec doesn’t need genetically enhanced vision to see it doesn’t quite reach Logan’s eyes.

But Alec is okay with that. If the last few months spent discovering and reshaping himself have taught him anything, it’s this – some things _must_ take time.

Logan clears his throat again, to get rid of that choking sensation no doubt. “So, um,” he adjusts his glasses with a trembling hand, “This… smells really good. New recipe?”

Alec longs to walk over to Logan, scoop him out of his wheelchair and just hold him, keep him close.

Instead, he lets the man keep his pride, and schools his so very expressive face into a classic smirk – one that Max loves to hate.

“New life. But with more ‘us’ in it.”

 

 

> _And you’re leading me down_  
>  _To the place by the sea._  
>  _I hear your soft voice calling to me._  
>  _Making a date for later by phone_  
>  _And if you’re alone,_  
>  _I’ll come home._

 

***** THE END *****


End file.
